CPDCBriefs in California on the Present—and Growing—Danger from China

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA—On March 1st, the Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPDC) held the ninth in a series of non-partisan 2020 Policy Battlespace Threat Briefings in key early voting states. The California Briefing was facilitated by the American Freedom Alliance and took place late on Sunday afternoon at the Luxe Sunset Hotel in Los Angeles. These programs are aimed at informing presidential candidates, the electorate and state officials about the ominous ambitions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and—thanks in no small measure to financing from U.S. investors—its growing capabilities to act on them.

This Facebook-livestreamed program featured presentations by four members of the CPDC who addressed the urgent need for presidential candidates and voters in the state’s upcoming presidential primary on March 3rd to understand the multifaceted and proliferating threats posed by the CCP to this country and the world. Whether those who seek to be our next Commander-in-Chief like it or not, they will have to contend with and counter China’s decades-long “unrestricted warfare.” And those doing the hiring for that position have a need to know that the applicants are up to what is certain to be Job #1 in the national security portfolio, and probably in the economic and public health ones, as well.

As with all of these 2020 Policy Battlespace Threat Briefings, a major feature of the presentation and discussion was the dangerous contribution being made to the present and growing danger from China by individual and institutional U.S. investors —including state public pension funds like the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS). Such investors are, wittingly or unwittingly, underwriting CCP-owned or -affiliated companies engaged in behavior inimical to our vital interests, economic competitiveness and/or national security. The Committee is particularly concerned about the fact that, under CalPERS’ Chief Investment Officer, Yu Ben Meng, that pension fund has more than trebled the number of Chinese companies in which his plan is invested (from 11 in 2018 to 38 in 2019, with 23 of those corporations directly tied to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). In addition, such PRC companies fail to meet the standards for transparency and material risk-disclosure required of American corporations listed in the U.S. capital markets.

The CPDC’s California Briefing team members were:

Brian Kennedy, former President of the Claremont Institute; President of the American Strategy Group and Chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger: China. Kennedy described the CCP’s decades-long “unrestricted warfare” against the United States and its relentless drive to supplant this country as the world’s dominant power. He also addressed the steps that have been taken in recent years to begin to challenge and counter the Chinese threat.

Frank Gaffney, former Assistant Secretary of Defense (acting) and Vice Chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger: China. Gaffney addressed the historic role a predecessor Committee on the Present Danger played in helping shape the policy battlespace in the run-up to and during the 1980 election with respect to that time’s existential threat to freedom – the Soviet Union. He recalled the mandate that President Reagan received to abandon the policy of engagement then known as “détente” in favor of rolling back the USSR. Gaffney argued that a similar course-correction is needed with respect to our era’s existential threat: the Chinese Communist Party. He also described the dangers associated with American capital markets and investors underwriting the sorts of threats the Briefing, using the large investment CalPERS is making in China under the direction of Meng, a participant in the CCP’s Thousand Talents Program which, as Rep. Banks noted, the FBI has described as “part of China’s non-traditional espionage against the United States.”

John Mills, U.S. Army (Ret.), former Director, Cybersecurity Policy, Strategy, and International Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Col. Mills examined CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), with its colonial exploitation of foreign nations’ economies, resources, strategic locations and people. He described the blow-back that has begun to attend the payday loan-style financing of the PRC’s build-out of airfields, seaports, rail networks, road systems and digital (5G) infrastructure in developing nations, and even some developed ones. When, predictably, the countries in question default on their credit payments, these assets are subject to expropriation and use by the Chinese for commercial and even military purposes – usually in ways that translate into additional problems for us. As a result of such experiences, Col. Mills observed, many BRI states are yearning for re-engaged American statesmanship and leadership, something it behooves us to provide.

Greg Autry, a serial entrepreneur, essayist and best-selling co-author (with Dr. Peter Navarro) of Death by China: Confronting the Dragon – a Call to Action and co-producer of a documentary film of the same name. Dr. Autry addressed the CCP’s ambitions and programs for dominating space, including its efforts to destroy the nascent U.S. private sector space launch industry. He warned of the dire implications of allowing any other power to exercise the sort of power-projection capabilities that would flow from control of space and discussed the sorts of steps America must take to ensure that it enjoys that position, not China.

Additional briefings in other key states will be announced shortly.

Video of the CPDC’s California Threat Briefing will be accessible at www.PresentDangerChina.org, as are the previous CPDC programs and a wealth of other information about the present and growing danger from China.